Best job ever

Teaching is hard work. Some days it's hard to feel successful, and it's hard to know what you really accomplished. But then there are days when I sit there and look at all my students engaged and working hard, and when I listen to the student whose reading has improved so much since August. And my heart is filled with joy because I have the privilege of being part of all of it. And then there are those extra special perks. Days like yesterday, when a student delivers warm chocolate chip cookies, baked fresh that morning by her mother. And I think, This is the best job ever! 

I just finished reading Ramona the Pest to my class. When we got to the part where Ramona was banned from the Kindergarten until she could stop pulling Susan's "boing, boing" curls, one of my girls asked me, "Would you ever do that to us?" I just laughed and said, "No!" I didn't explain to her that I couldn't, if I wanted to. :)

In math one day, we were practicing using timelines, so we made a timeline with events from my life. I asked them how many years they think we should put on the timeline. One of them thought 100 years.

They've also been practicing writing numbers using words, which means I see some interesting spelling, such as "9inedy" and "ate hundred" and "aty."

One morning this week, I looked across the classroom and saw a bunch of girls gathered around one of the boys. (This is not typical behavior for third graders.) Then I realized they were all looking at a picture of his brand new baby brother. And of course then I had to join them! (When I say I love newborns, they look at me strangely, as if they can't imagine me with any other people besides third graders.)

I entered the bathroom a couple of days ago, and overheard two girls who were in the stalls.
"I started at the bottom and went to the top."
I assumed I missed the beginning of the conversation.
Long pause.
Same girl: "I got 100."
...
Girl number 2: "Oh! You're counting them! ...1,2,3,4,5..."
And I realized (as I was leaving the bathroom and they continued counting), that they were counting the tiles on the bathroom floor. Maybe I should have checked in with their teacher to see how long they were missing from class. :)

Best job ever.

Incredible kids

My students find ways all the time to brighten my days. I received a hand-written letter, a whoopie pie, and pictures all in one day!

Last week we had three half days so that we could have parent-teacher conferences in the afternoons. On Wednesday, I reminded the students that Thursday would be a full day. And they cheered. They cheered about having a full day of school. How blessed am I to be teaching these incredible kids? 

As incredible as they are, I don't think I'm quite ready to travel across the Atlantic with all of them. We've been learning about Ancient Rome in social studies, and I mentioned that someday I would love to go to Rome and see the Colosseum. They wanted to go too, so naturally they concluded that we should take a class field trip to Italy. A few days later, we learned about Pompeii, and when someone said that they would like to visit it, I said, "Sure, we'll just go there after our field trip to the Colosseum." I have to remember that not all third graders pick up on sarcasm, because some of them were so confused. "Wait, what? Our field trip to the Colosseum?" 

I explained to one of the students that when there is a problem like 5 + m = 12, you have to find the missing number that m stands for. "Does m stand for mystery?" she wondered. That would make a lot of sense. 

On a science worksheet, one of the questions was, "Are you warm-blooded or cold-blooded? How do you know?" From past experience, I told the students they couldn't say something like, "Because the book says so," or "My teacher told me." But one student wrote, "I know because I am smart."

At break time one day, I heard a group of boys chanting, "Do it! Do it! Do it!" Of course anytime there is a group of boys chanting "Do it!" there are automatically red flags. So I stared at them, waiting to see what it was, but then they started whispering, "The teacher's looking." You better believe it. So it is still a mystery. Probably for the best.